Kate's Wedding

by Chrissie Manby

  ‘I’m ready,’ Diana announced. Ben got wearily to his feet again.

  ‘We’ve got about three hundred shots to work from here,’ Pete tried. ‘If you’re feeling tired, then there’s really no need to keep snapping away. I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the results we already have.’

  ‘But we haven’t recreated the iconic pose from Titanic,’ said Diana. ‘I definitely want some shots of that.’

  Ben assumed another pose and thought of England. Everyone present, apart from Diana, gritted their teeth and thought of England as the shoot went on for the best part of another hour.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The following day – a Saturday – brought another engagement shoot. Kate and Ian were about as excited by the idea of spending an afternoon having their photographs taken as Ben had been. They tried to wriggle out of it, but Trudy, the photographer, persuaded Kate that it was important to go through this particular trial.

  ‘I want to get to know you both properly,’ she said, ‘so that I can take the best pictures possible on your actual wedding day.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll do fine without the practice,’ said Kate.

  ‘What kind of professional would I be if I didn’t do everything in my power to bring you wedding-day perfection?’ was Trudy’s retort.

  Then Ian’s mother said that she wanted a picture of the happy couple for her mantelpiece. And so did Elaine and John. They couldn’t wait until the wedding.

  ‘I’d like one too,’ said Tess. ‘You can pose as Kate Middleton and Prince William.’

  ‘We are not posing as Kate Middleton and Prince William,’ said Kate, ‘no matter how much it would make you laugh.’

  ‘You’re so boring,’ said Tess. ‘I was going to get it printed on a tea towel for your Christmas present.’

  ‘Thanks but no, thanks.’

  Luckily, Kate knew that Ian would agree with her. There was no need for some silly pastiche. They would just be themselves. To that effect, they both dressed as they would have ordinarily dressed at the weekend. No ball gowns or tuxedos for them. They both wore jeans. Kate washed her hair but didn’t spend an especially long time styling it.

  Because Trudy was based down on the south coast – Kate had picked her at random from the photographers at the bridal fair – Ian and Kate were going to travel down to meet her there. It seemed like a good idea. For a start, it would give Kate another opportunity to see her parents, who were in need of buoying up as the day of Elaine’s surgery grew nearer. Plus, there would be far more beautiful venues there than in London. Kate had no outside space at her flat. Ian’s scruffy little garden was overlooked by half a dozen other flats and neither Kate nor Ian relished the thought of the neighbours seeing them prancing around in front of a camera. They would think they had gone mad.

  Unfortunately, Trudy was not of quite the same mind. After Kate explained that they wanted to keep things classy, she reminded Kate and Ian that her speciality was ‘quirky’ wedding photographs. She wanted to give each bride and groom she worked for a wedding album that would keep them smiling into old age.

  ‘For that you need something different. I’m going to tune into your deepest desires,’ she promised, ‘and give you a set of photographs you never dreamt possible.’

  ‘Really,’ said Ian, ‘some simple poses would be OK.’

  Kate agreed.

  ‘But that’s so boring!’

  ‘Please,’ Kate pleaded. ‘He’s right. It’s not as though we’re kids. We’re not quirky people. Some simple, classic, casual poses will reflect the way we are just fine.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said Trudy.

  Kate should have guessed the moment she saw Trudy at the bridal fair that a photographer with bright green dreadlocks was hardly going to take a traditional approach, but Trudy tried her best to achieve the look Kate was after.

  The trio walked down to the beach. It was bare and stark in the winter, but Trudy approved of the light reflected off the water. She said she liked to shoot with natural light wherever she could.

  ‘What about my wrinkles?’ Kate asked to break the ice.

  ‘I can Photoshop them out if you wish.’

  Kate made a note to stop joking about things like wrinkles and saddlebags, since it was becoming clear from people’s responses that these days she actually had them.

  ‘We’ll start here,’ said Trudy.

  Ian scouted out a large piece of driftwood that would make do for a seat. He and Kate sat down at either end.

  ‘Snuggle up a bit.’

  ‘It’s not very well balanced,’ Kate explained. ‘If we move closer together, we might fall over.’

  ‘But you don’t look very romantic.’

  Ian reached out his hand. Kate took it.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Just about.’

  Trudy quickly ran through fifty frames.

  ‘There’s not a lot of dynamism here, folks. Laugh with each other. Ian, tell Kate a joke.’

  ‘Why is it that being told to make a joke chases just about every funny thought I ever had right out of my head?’ Ian complained.

  Kate forced a smile at his observation.

  ‘I am hating this,’ she told him.

  ‘You look lovely,’ Ian reassured her.

  ‘Come on! You look like you’re advertising health insurance,’ said Trudy, ‘and this is the picture to show how you’re getting on with real life after your breast-cancer diagnosis.’

  Kate bristled.

  ‘Was it something I said?’ asked Trudy. She carried on snapping without waiting for an answer. ‘Don’t look at the camera like that, Kate. It’s even worse than before.’

  Ian shook his head slightly to let Kate know that there was little point telling Trudy she’d come a bit close to the mark with her breast-cancer comment.

  ‘Hmm. I think we need to try something different,’ Trudy sighed when she saw her results. ‘It’s just so wooden.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Kate. ‘We’re neither of us used to this modelling lark.’

  ‘Then why don’t you let me make some suggestions? I know you didn’t like the sound of it, but I’ve found that quite often when I get people posing like they’re in a scene they already know, such as the royal-engagement pictures or something from a film, it helps them to put their inhibitions aside. If you know that you’re only mucking about, you start to have a bit of fun. Will you try it? We’re by the sea, so how about we go for the scene from Titanic where Winslet and DiCaprio are on the front of the boat? That “I’m the king of the world” bit. You do know it . . .’

  ‘I suppose we could,’ said Ian.

  ‘You want me to be Kate Winslet?’ Kate asked.

  ‘For the first few shots,’ said Trudy. ‘Then you can swap over. Even funnier. Come on. You might enjoy it. Let’s do it here.’

  Gamely, Kate and Ian did their best to do as Trudy asked. They climbed up onto the sea wall and leaned over the rusty old railings. Kate grimaced as Ian leaned his weight against her and her hip bones pressed into the metal. Not only was the metal painful, it groaned ominously and Kate could picture herself face first on the shingle.

  ‘How long do we have to hold this pose?’ she asked.

  ‘As long as it takes to get the right expressions on your faces. You’re supposed to look ecstatic. You’re in love. You’re together. Feel the exhilaration of the wind in your hair, the sea breeze on your face.’

  ‘I’m bloody freezing,’ said Ian.

  ‘Then snuggle up,’ suggested Trudy. ‘Come on, guys. I want to feel the love coming out of the pixels.’

  ‘Ian,’ said Kate, ‘you’re going to have to lean back a bit. I can’t breathe.’

  Ian obliged, but he leaned so far back that he tumbled from the wall and turned his ankle as he landed.

  ‘Shit.’ He sat down heavily on the pebbles.

  Between them, Kate and Trudy helped Ian to his feet.

  ‘Have you broken anything?’ Trudy asked anxiously.r />
  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Ian.

  Kate seized the opportunity to say, ‘But we should probably call it a day for now. I’ll get Ian back to my mum and dad’s place and stick a bag of frozen peas on his ankle before it has a chance to swell up.’

  Trudy tutted. ‘And you guys were just starting to loosen up.’

  ‘Well, that was an experience. How are you feeling?’ Kate asked in the car. She was watching Trudy’s little red Mini in the rear-view mirror, hoping that the photographer would turn off soon. It wasn’t as though she could hear them, but Kate still felt observed.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Ian.

  ‘You’re not in any pain?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘It looked like you landed badly.’

  ‘I was acting. Anything to get out of having to be Kate Winslet.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Kate asked. ‘Because it looked like you landed badly.’

  ‘Completely sure,’ said Ian. ‘I landed like a cat.’

  ‘Then you don’t need the peas.’

  ‘I do need a pint, though. Can we stop off at that pub your mum and dad took us to that time?’

  Kate wasn’t going to argue. Anything to put off the moment when they went back to her parents’ place and the conversation turned to hospitals again.

  The lumpectomy was just a few days away now and it was overshadowing everything. In some ways, thought Kate, it was better that they didn’t have longer to prepare themselves for the awful day. In the few short weeks since Elaine got her diagnosis, she had seen her parents age years. No matter that the doctors kept reassuring them that Elaine’s was a relatively contained cancer and was unlikely to turn much nastier overnight, Elaine and John swung between pessimism and outright despair. Within minutes of picking up the phone to them Kate was feeling equally drained. Being at the house was worse. They rehashed their hospital conversations endlessly, asking Kate for a close reading of everything, as if her law degree might be any use at all when it came to unscrambling medical talk.

  Kate hated this sudden shift in perspective. She hated feeling that her parents were looking to her to find the answers. This wasn’t the way of things. Despite the fact that she was nearly forty, Kate wasn’t sure she felt ready to move into the position of responsible adult as far as her parents were concerned. She still felt she had so much to learn from them. She still wanted to be able to turn to them when she wasn’t sure about something. To find herself having to reassure her mother and father about something so important was simply horrible.

  Still, she was ready to do her bit. Thank goodness Kate’s gardening leave was about to start and she wouldn’t have to worry about getting time off work to help out. In that respect, the timing could not have been better. The plan was that she would spend the days after her mother’s surgery in Washam. There was no fixed timescale. Kate said she would be there for as long as it took. Though her parents insisted that there was no need for Kate to decamp to Washam for the duration of Elaine’s recovery, Tess confirmed that Kate’s decision was the right one. Elaine was relieved that Kate would be there to ‘look after Dad’, the main reason being that after forty-seven years of marriage to an excellent chef, John couldn’t cook anything more complicated than a Pot Noodle. The fact that Kate was hardly any more qualified in the kitchen didn’t seem to matter.

  ‘You’re a woman,’ said Elaine. ‘You don’t think it’s beneath you to read the instructions on the label. Your father would put a steak and kidney pie in the microwave in a foil tray and burn the place down.’

  ‘What’s wrong with putting a foil tray into the microwave?’ Ian asked.

  Back in London after the disastrous engagement shoot, Kate worked doubly hard to make sure that all the loose ends were tied up before she left her job. Though she didn’t feel much loyalty to the firm that she was leaving, the world of employment law was a small place and Kate knew it was just a matter of time before she found herself working alongside her old colleagues again. It was best to leave on a high note. She was, however, irritated to have to cancel a long-awaited and much-anticipated girls’ night out with Helen and Anne in her efforts to make sure everything was done to perfection. With children and husbands and careers to juggle, it could be months before all their schedules coincided again.

  With work tidied away, Kate turned her attention to home. She even did an early Christmas shop, filling the freezer at Ian’s flat with almost everything they could possibly need for the holidays ahead and ordering the rest on Ocado. Not knowing how long she would have to be in Washam, she didn’t want to risk having to brave Waitrose on Christmas Eve. She made sure that Ian inputted the arrival of the Ocado van in his Black-Berry, just in case she wasn’t back in time to receive it.

  Ian was being surprisingly sulky about Kate’s upcoming stay with her parents. When she told him that she didn’t know exactly how long she would be away, he said that he understood, but Kate recognised that he wasn’t happy. Ian didn’t have to say anything to express his disappointment when Kate told him that she would have to turn down an invite to his sister’s house, just in case.

  ‘I just hate spending too much time apart,’ he said.

  To soften the blow, and since the operation was to take place on the Friday, Kate suggested that Ian join her over the weekend. There was plenty of space in her parents’ house. She told him she’d love to have him there; plus, she figured that he could help keep her dad occupied with talk about football and Top Gear. Men’s stuff. Given that he had pouted over their upcoming separation, Ian surprised her by making his excuses straight away.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense for me to come down as well,’ said Ian. ‘Your mum and dad have only got a small place. I’d be in the way.’

  ‘You won’t be in the way. Besides, it will only be me and Dad rattling around. Mum will be in hospital. I could do with the moral support.’

  ‘I’ve got quite a lot on at the office. If you’re not going to be around, I could go in on Saturday, get some work done.’

  ‘Oh, Ian, you don’t want to go into the office on a Saturday.’

  ‘Of course I don’t want to, but if I go this weekend, then when your mum’s out of hospital and our life is back to normal, we can spend more time together without me worrying about work.’

  He seemed adamant.

  After asking him a second time, and receiving the same answer, Kate stopped trying to argue her case. Much as she had wanted his support, maybe Ian was right. Maybe it would be easier not to have him around. Kate knew her family’s idiosyncrasies. It might be stressful for Ian and her father to have to share the same space when they didn’t really know each other that well, especially under the circumstances. If Ian found it upsetting when Kate cried, how on earth would he cope if his future father-in-law was overcome with emotion too?

  I must not be upset, Kate told herself as she packed a suitcase. To Ian, this makes sense. He’d be there if he thought I really needed him.

  All the same, she couldn’t help wondering why he was so determined to stay in London for the weekend if he really did hate to be apart from her as much as he claimed. She emailed Helen, who thought that Ian probably really did think he would get in the way, but later that afternoon, on a hunch, Kate tapped a familiar web address into her browser and discovered, not entirely to her surprise, that West Ham were playing that Saturday. At home.

  ‘Saturday in the office, my arse.’

  Kate didn’t reveal her discovery to Helen. She was too embarrassed. Neither did she say anything to Ian about it – he certainly didn’t mention any home game – but Kate brooded until Thursday morning, when she got in her car and left for the south coast while Ian was still in the shower. She didn’t even kiss him goodbye.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘Oh God, no!’

  Diana exclaimed with such anguish that Ben immediately feared the worst. He stopped mid-shave and barrelled downstairs, almost slipping in his hurry, to find Diana sitting at the kitchen tabl
e with her iPhone. Her face was crumpled. She looked distraught, as though she’d just received news of a death.

  Ben raced to be by her side. He fell to his knees beside her chair and lifted her face so that she was looking right at him.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’

  ‘This,’ she wailed. She shoved the iPhone into Ben’s hand. Diana’s browser was open to the Daily Mail online. She could never start the day without a strong dose of gossip.

  Ben looked at the article she had been reading uncomprehendingly.

  ‘I thought they had done their engagement pictures,’ Diana sniffed. ‘Nobody told me they were going to have Mario Testino.’

  Ben focused on the photograph of Kate Middleton snuggling into Prince William’s arms. It was a lovely photograph, if you liked that sort of thing. It was a little bit too cheesy for Ben.

  ‘They look nice,’ said Ben, handing the phone back to his fiancée.

  ‘But they’re wearing different outfits!’ said Diana. ‘She isn’t wearing the blue dress. Oh God, I might have known. We’re going to look like complete idiots because we’re in the wrong clothes. Unless . . .’

  Ben knew what was coming next. She couldn’t . . . Surely she wouldn’t suggest that they do more photographs. He had to pre-empt her. He stood up, pulling her up from the chair as he did so. He pulled her close to him and held her tightly.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. We don’t need to look like Kate and Wills,’ he said. ‘We’re Diana and Ben. I don’t want you to look like anyone else. I just want you to be a hundred per cent pure you.’

  The sentiment was wonderful. Ben was certain that he’d headed off disaster, but Diana recoiled in disgust.

  ‘For God’s sake, Ben, you’ve got shaving cream on my shoulder. You’re so bloody selfish. I can’t believe it. This dress has to be dry-cleaned. I might as well throw it out.’

  Diana did throw the dress out. And after Ben went to work, she called in sick. She spent the rest of the day driving from mall to mall in search of the cream Reiss dress that Kate Middleton was wearing in the Testino shots.